Catholic Family World History plans-- Middle Ages-- for next year

I think I finally have sorted out what books I will be using for next year's Connecting With History, Volume II. I'll be doing things a little differently this year-- following along in each unit but still slowing down the pace of our reading because last year we tried to read everything on the list. Although I enjoyed it, I think the kids felt a bit rushed and also.... I think it wasn't as CM as it could have been, since she advocated building a long, slow relationship with only the BEST books. I really want us to stay as faithful to CM's methods as we can.

This year I have one kid in Grade 2, one in Grade 1, one in Prep, and one in Awakening. ;)

I plan to include tales from each unit in our term's literature/tales reading, and saints in each term's catechism/church history reading, just as we did last year in our study of the Ancient World.

History readings will include work from the spine (Our Island Story), Catholic supplementation (Founders of Freedom for the littles and Old World's Gifts to the New for the oldest), and one historical literature book per term that I felt encompasses the era.

We will still be doing age appropriate copywork and memory work from CWH, bible reading, as well as narration topics for testing understanding, activities (one per unit), a book of centuries, mapwork,  and presenting (usually a play) at the end.

I know I've been asked a few times which way I'm going to go, so here are the final choices I've made.
The family read-aloud is Our Island Story, Founders of Freedom,  and also the reading from the lives of the saints each unit, and the rest are individual assignments.

For MA users Prep Level/ AO users Y0/ Grade Prek/ K:

Core:  Founders of Freedom and Our Island Story
Saints: Once Upon  a Time Saints
Tales: D'Aulaire's Norse Gods and Giants

Term 1: Spend the day in Ancient Rome, Mary my Mother, Good St Joseph, The Apostles of Jesus, Pompeii: Buried alive
Term 2: St Valentine, St George and the Dragon, St Brigid, and Hodges' King Arthur
Term 3: Usborne time traveler: Vikings

For MA users Level 1B/ AO Y1/ Grade 1:
Core: Founders of Freedom and Our Island Story

Saints: Once upon a time saints and More once upon a time saints
Tales: D'Aulaire's Norse Gods and Giants

Term 1:  St Paul the Apostle by Windeatt
Term 2:King Arthur Tales from the Round Table
Term 3: Leif the Lucky by D'Aulaire

For MA users Level 1A (1) / AOY2 / Grade 2:

Core: The Old World's Gifts to the New and Our Island Story
Saints: 57 Stories of Saints
Tales: D'Aulaire's Norse Gods and Giants

Term 1: Augustus Caesar's World
Term 2: King Arthur and His Knights
Term 3: Viking Tales

Final (I hope!) schedule for next school year

   Combined Prep 1B 1A Final

Enjoy!

Early Years Guide: Pre-narration skills

There are many mothers out there who have decided to try homeschooling and are looking to use the CM method. Having been one myself, I know how hard it was to sit on my hands and not to force/coerce my kids to sit down at the table and start doing copywork before they were ready.

In fact-- ooops--- I may have done just that.
It's HARD!! I know it is. We read with excitement all the wonderful things our kids will be doing. We see our friends and fellow homeschoolers posting about it on facebook. We want to dive in. Yesterday.

But I do believe Charlotte was right to say that we should wait.
There is just so much going on in there to process and so much of it must come naturally and peacefully if it is to blossom in them at all,  and so to before six to require a narration is just asking for trouble.

Now, we all know there are lots of things TO focus on during Year 0, whether we decide to spend a lot of time doing nature study, painting, or helping around the house. Ideally we are fully integrating the child into our grown up days while leaving them lots of room and space to grow in quietly and peacefully, preferably outdoors. And we aren't just letting them loose-- we are intentionally parenting them into those guiding rails we hope to set them free to follow later.

For those of us who have had one or two learners go through the Early Years period of a CM education and have regrets about how it went because we feel we didn't trust Charlotte as much as we should have, it's maybe doubly important to surround ourselves with reminders that this next time will be different-- better--- and more peaceful and joyful both for the child and for the parents.

On my end, when I hear all these mothers around me frequently flying into a panic over their pre-K curriculum, I am often so relieved not to be a part of the hive-mind. But even still, I  feel certain that every couple of weeks I need to re-read Charlotte's statements about the importance of waiting, lest I be tempted to just plop my three year old down and hand her a worksheet..... or a copy of Plutarch.

Wait... she already does that by herself.
Narration, for example, is one of those areas I really struggle. It seems to me to be something that I need to groom and build into the children and not something that will naturally bubble over one day. And yet today I was reminded of the beauty of the act of narration and the reasons why a child's narration is a perfect "test" of her ability to grasp the text or the world around her and compose it in a pleasing manner.

Whereas my seven year old, who is wrapping up AOY1 and who I hustled into "doing school" beginning promptly on her second birthday (doubting Charlotte every step of the way, mind you), truly struggles to narrate not because she doesn't WANT to do it naturally but because I ASK her to do so, my three year old excels. And so does my five year old, who loves to retell every story we tell him with great gusto, using such exact and precise language I've often wondered if he somehow memorized the text after hearing it once.

Today, we were sitting at the table and my three year old began recounting a story she had told us the night before. As she continued, I realized this was something she was developing a HABIT of doing.... every time the occasion presented itself, she had begun to tell us stories. I remembered that my older two children had gone through a similar phase.

I have been constantly amazed watching her grow and develop, noticing with joy all the telltale "signs" that she is onto the new skill. I recalled with great fondness the hours we used to all spend at the dinner table when they were tiny, telling stories-- whatever stories we wanted-- each in turn. Some of the little ones would talk the whole hour if I let them, with very few prompts other than "I see!" and "and then what happened?"

Now, this is story telling, not narrating (usually) but I call it pre-narration because it seems to be the stage in the early years that prepares the fertile ground for narrative abilities. In the moment, I had a lightbulb go off: THIS IS SCHOOL.

For a Charlotte Mason family, this act of letting a young child "tell" a story as she will is preparing her to later tell back her schoolbooks. But it's so natural and so painless and so enjoyable for both child and parent and onlooker! Yes, it's all those things.... and more!

Because as a parent, or as a sibling, it can be cute for a while to listen to these stories they want to tell over and over again. But it takes REAL kindness to sit and listen to a three year old with rapt attention for twenty minutes. It takes selflessness and courage, too.

It teaches those habits to your older children-- the habits of patience, of kindness, and of perseverance. Of attention! And so around the dinner table we go for another round, with the realization that though this is technically "school" it is really just me and my children, delighting in one another and building narrative skills.

And once again, Charlotte was right.

Below, here is my three year old telling us the tiger tale.



And here is a sweet little French girl doing the same thing that your own kids will love watching and listening to in preparation for their own French lessons later. Happy pre-narrating!

Some tips on scheduling AO in the early years

For those of you considering Ambleside Online or Mater Amabilis for the next school year, here are some suggestions for scheduling that have helped make things easier for us. Like us, many of you will have several small children to work with at once, and the idea can be daunting.

To give you an idea, this year, we combined AOY1/ MA 1B for my oldest with Connecting With History I for my "kindergardener."  I also have a "pre-school age" daughter, and an infant. Despite all this, keeping everybody happy was suprisingly simple because we followed Charlotte Mason's advice and simple biblical instruction about parenting.

My first piece of advice in scheduling is to begin habit training very early. Charlotte Mason suggested that it was possible-- and I believe this with all my heart-- to begin training a child in good habits even in infancy. Creating a culture of love, prayer, discipline, and hard work begins at the breast and continues throughout the child's life, and no where is it more evident to me that we can help children to learn good habits from the beginning than when I hear how many mothers out there struggle with keeping a two year old occupied while his or her siblings "do school." When a child is secure and payed attention to, and has been given clear boundaries in a loving but firm way, he grows to be an easy child to be around.

I have always had toddlers who would happily sit for 30 mins at a time with one activity and then happily switch to another half hour of another activity, entertaining themselves as we went, all the way until lunch time. My children have always been trained to play alone as well as with others and to happily occupy themselves and pay close attention to the things they are playing with. We rarely use the television as a babysitting tool because we don't have to. This works! And after this problem-- the "What To Do With The Little Ones" question-- is answered, scheduling becomes a breeze!

My second piece of advice is to closely adhere to what Charlotte herself says about scheduling: keep lessons short, leave the afternoons free for handicrafts, lifeskills, and play, send the mother out to play from time to time, and take lots of outdoor time when you are able.

That being said, you still need to get an idea of the logistics of using the Ambleside Curriculum. These will look different in EVERY family, but for some, here is how it will work. In AOY1-3, the mother (or father) is doing the majority of the reading, and aloud. As Y3 comes to a close, the goal is to have transitioned the child to reading their work on their own, but this doesn't happen overnight, and especially in years 1 and 2, the parent has a big job. I've been told it will get easier, but to be honest, I will probably miss these days--- I LOVE the one-on-one time I get with each child.

Other AO moms much more experienced than I have said that they enjoyed keeping their children in separate years, and that despite the large family aspect, their kids and homeschools have been in thriving mode doing so. In other words, don't panic and shove all your kids together in the same year just because you don't know how you will do it all. You will. And it will work.

I got my basic outline for our weekly schedule from one of my favorite blogs: The Fisher Academy (another missionary AO family) It works for us because we have the time. Other families do ALL the AO reading in a couple days and leave the rest of the week open, or spread it out over the seven days. It just depends. The way we do it is based on a five day work week.

It looks like this:

MONDAYS we do Science & Natural History
TUESDAYS we do Literature, Poetry & Shakespeare
WEDNESDAYS we do Geography & Travel
THURSDAYS we do Salvation History
FRIDAYS we do Fine Arts & Philosophy

In addition.... Saturdays, we do Torah Study and Plutarch, Sundays we emphasize Gospel Study and Good Works.

Also in addition, also this won't apply to many of you, we do Connecting With History. This means we do one unit every four weeks or so... and have different activities emphasized each of those weeks. To keep things straight, I assign my CWH units like this:

WEEK A: Consider & Overview
WEEK B: Notebook & Explore
WEEK C: Notebook & Explore
WEEK D: Wrap up & Present.

When I go through the AO booklist, all I have to keep straight is what is due to be read that particular week, any additional books I've assigned, and which week of which unit CWH we are in. Sounds like a lot, but as you'll see, it gets easier. In fact, one of my favorite things about AO is that I don't have to waste time thinking about things that don't matter all that much (like schedules) and instead can spend my time thinking about the great ideas presented, just like my kids.

As an example, let's work with AO first, and then I'll show you how I add in CWH.

let's take Week 18 of AOY1.

for Week 18
Bible: 1 Kings 18:20-39 (Elijah and the prophets of Baal)
An Island Story: chapter 11 "The Story of How the Giant's Dance was Brought to Britain"
Fifty Famous Stories Retold: "George Washington and his Hatchet"; and "Doctor Goldsmith" (1774)
Burgess's Bird Book: choose one chapter based on geographic region and season
Aesop's Fables: "The Lion, the Bear and the Fox" (pg. 37 in the Milo Winter version) and "The Hares and the Frogs" (pg. 39 in the Milo Winter version)
Trial and Triumph: chapter 5 "Ambrose Bishop of Milan" (339-397 AD)
A.A. Milne: a poem a day
Blue Fairy Book: "Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp" (A wicked Magician and his wicked Brother are killed) OR "Why the Sea is Salt" (a greedy man tells his brother to go the Dead; a ship sinks and all perish)
Paddle to the Sea: chapter 14

If I were just doing AO, each child would be doing arithmetic, hearing a poem, doing phonics, reading, and writing (via copywork), foreign language, as well as some memory work and catechism first. Let's say that goes from 9-10:30. (Short lesson, remember?) Then from 10:30 to 12, we would do whatever was assigned from the AO schedule that day.

In other words, by the time 10:30 rolls around, it's time to do the following (and this is where the magic happens!)

MONDAY-- nature study and Burgess Bird Book
TUESDAY-- Aesop and Blue Fairy Book
WEDNESDAY-Paddle to the Sea and a map drill based on the next day's work, Bible
THURSDAY-An Island Story and Fifty Famous Stories retold, Trial and Triumph

In the beginning, you don't need to require a narration of EVERY story, but do require it of a few.

Now, if you want to add in some other readings, like a recommended free read, for example, you would assign those where you aren't too busy. Let's say I want to add Little House in the Big Woods and Little Therese to the mix--- I would assign Little Therese in the place of our regular catechism study twice a week (say tues and thurs) because it's a living book that teaches Catechism. Then I would add in Little House as a bedtime read aloud on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday (where the read alouds are sparse)

There you go! Done by twelve.

Now, you'd still be missing some elements. Charlotte Mason did music study, taught an instrument and  did picture study, shakespeare, etc.

I do those on Fridays, and spread the instruments and songs out over the work week.
For example, we study music and art theory on Fridays, but we will study our month's hymn by just singing it every morning during devotions til it is memorized. I've added a geography course Mason herself wrote, and we do a lesson a week from it on wednesdays.

The most important thing we do is center our work day around two key periods: Morning and Evening Prayer.
In the mornings, we pray together and then study catechism (or read a living book about the saints or church history). In the evenings, we read a bible story together and then discuss it. Then we say night prayer before bed.

 In the end, I'm always amazed at how much we have accomplished in so short a time.
I do try to capitalize on mealtimes, when my kids are naturally more inclined to be attentive. At that time, I do read to them as much as possible, or take advantage of other thinking moments--like a drive in the car, to listen to a music selection or poem... even an audiobook. In theory, we can do AO from our vehicle, and don't need papers and pencils at all at this stage. :)
In practice, we don't do that much. I like holding books and reading them, and we don't get out of the house much except into nature. As you plan your CM education, you will find that you will be planning nature time as often as humanly possible. One other tip I have for scheduling is to carefully select your "other" non-AO curriculum carefully... using a complicated math program that takes an hour to complete each day isn't going to help you meet your goal of short lessons and being done by noon!

Now, for the adventurous, here is how I add CWH to our AO routine.

WEEK A: Introductory week.

I add the discussion questions to our dinner table conversation in a casual manner the first night. Then I add the introductory reading from the Bible or Spine (What CWH calls the Core) to the first week's Catechism or Bible reading time (we do Catechism study in the morning and bible study at night). I also use this time to do memory work with the suggested poems and bible passages from CWH. I take the vocabulary words from CWH and teach them in a casual manner during reading time.

WEEKS B and C: Notebook & Explore.

I usually continue with the poem and scripture memory, and add in the non-core CWH subjects. This usually involves some reading assignments for the kids, and making some entries into our book of centuries. It can also involve movies, projects etc. If so, there is always time to do the movies or projects at night on the weekends or in place of a handicraft one afternoon or something, and as far as the reading goes, we will often do the additional reading as naptime begins or at bedtime. If there is a LOT of reading to do, we don't do the AO free reads that week, instead reserving them for the summertime when CWH will not be in use. Also, we don't do CWH on thursdays, when AO's history is thick and takes up a lot of the day.
On Wednesdays, we do map drills out of CWH during these weeks. We also do any geography or travel reading from CWH on that day instead of paddle to the sea, which my oldest doesn't like much.

WEEK D: Wrap up & Presentation

If there is any reading left to do, I assign it as above til it is complete. Then I pick a day, usually a Saturday, to present in whatever way the kids decide to present the unit that month. One more thing: I don't combine AO history with CWH anymore. Charlotte herself said it was better for kids to make their own connections, and using the Book of Centuries helps them to place events in history. So I just go through one volume of CWH per year as a family, and then do individual AO readings for each kid. It works great!

That's it! Sounds really complicated and scary, I know, but when you have done it a few times you will be amazed-- as I was-- by the simplicity of this system. Of course, this is only what works for my family. Many of you will find innovative ways to use the AO curriculum without coming close to the style or structure we use here.

If this helped you, pass it around! And let me know if you find a way to improve on my combination AO/CWH scheduling. I'm always thinking about ways to simplify this process.

Outdoor Hour Challenge #1